Does anyone here use Sankey kegs instead of cornies? I have about 10 cornies and I’m always finding a vent that leaks or a keg top that won’t seal properly or some other little PITA with them. I know most people use them and I do appreciate the ease of cleaning but I’m wondering if I would be smarter to just go buy a bunch of slim 1/6th or even some 1/2 bbl kegs. It’s not like they ever leave my house.
But, my question is really about how you clean, sanitize and fill these. I am sure you can remove the spear and do it through the keg opening but I’m sure that would be a real pain and would likely end up with damage over time. So, for those few commercial brewers here, how do you do all this with a sanke. I’m understand that additional manufacturing may be needed to make these work.
I guess I’m just curious if anyone is successful using Sanke kegs.
Thanks
I think you need a keg washer of some sort. A contraption/machine, not a person.
As for leaking poppets, I’m making the move to the newish universal poppet. I have one or two kegs where a poppet leaks so I’m going to give this a try.
Sankes are a bit much for my operation right now, but I have had good success with the universal poppets. I have a little over 20 cornies in various states of ‘used’ from various manufacturers and they seem to work well in all of them.
To wash senkey keg you need to invert keg upside down and sprey cleaning solution to beer out and collect it at CO2 port. I recirculate with pump but I know people who do it with CO2.
Let me know if you want to see some pics. There is online manual that talk about cleaning cycle.
I do this with a pump and sprayer with hot pbw for corny kegs. The commercial keg washers I’ve seen in action use steam or caustic, though. I can’t think of a reason that a sanke keg wouldn’t work with pbw, but I’ve never tried.
My local nano where I help out uses PBW in the keg washer. You invert the keg, then blow the cleaning solutions up the spear, and drain out the CO2 port.
Invert, PBW recirculate, blow it out, hot water rinse, blow it out, repeat rinse, blow it out, SaniClean recirculate, CO2 blow it out, repressurize with CO2.